God of Magic

by Logan Jacobs

  “Aerin, can I take a look at that map?” I asked. So far, the tunnel hadn’t branched off at all and there was only one direction we could go, but if we could figure out where we were in relation to where we needed to go, we could try to plan our route.

  Aerin handed me the map, and I unfurled it and looked it over. The safe route we were meant to take was carefully marked out, and several other locations had icons or other notations that signified danger. I picked out a few tunnels that I thought might be the one we were in currently, but it was impossible to be sure since none of them had been marked. I chose the one that seemed like the most likely option based on how far we’d traveled off-route and showed Aerin.

  “I think this might be where we are. What do you think?”

  “That seems right.” She pointed to a scale in the bottom corner of the map and then traced the path. “This represents about two miles, I’d say that’s pretty close to how far Merlin took us.”

  I scanned the map again to see where this tunnel led and if it ever connected back to the safe route marked on our map. My relief to find that the paths did eventually converge was dampened by the realization that where they did finally meet was the chamber where the chest we were meant to retrieve was located. Still, at least we were able to orient ourselves, and since we knew where we needed to go, we could mark out a new path on the map.

  “Look,” I said with a nod to the others, “we can keep going this way, and when the tunnel forks, we go left. Then farther down we take another left, then a right, and from there it’s pretty straightforward. We can still get to the chamber where the chest is.”

  Aerin leaned over my shoulder to get a look at the new route I proposed and nodded. “That should work,” she said and smiled.

  “Let’s not forget there’s a reason this wasn’t marked as a safe passage,” Lavinia warned. “We need to be prepared for whatever’s down here.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “Everybody keep your eyes open. You, too, Merlin.”

  Though his body was lost in the shadows ahead, I caught the reflection of the torchlight from the puca’s eyes as he turned in response to his name. The cute little squirrel-bear-monkey looking creature trilled, and despite the trouble he’d given us in our first encounter, I was glad to have him along now. He had proven himself quite useful, and I knew that with his keen senses we’d be able to get a bit more forewarning of imminent dangers than if we were on our own. The aid of a puca was one advantage Ren and the Stewards didn’t have.

  It wasn’t long before we reached the fork that I had found on the map, and then I felt confident that we had identified our mine tunnel correctly. According to the new route I had plotted, we went left. After a few yards, the wooden supports that had guided us for so long disappeared entirely, and the tunnel narrowed drastically and began to look more like a natural formation than anything a person had carved out. Thankfully, the tunnel did continue onward. Though I knew about the numerous dangers that lurked within the Shadow Delves, my worst fear at the moment was that we would find the path blocked and have to double back again and figure out a new route.

  I pocketed the map and resisted the urge to check it every few minutes. The uniformity of the tunnel was unsettling. It was difficult to guess how far we’d gone when the way ahead, and the way back, started to look exactly the same, but after a time, I began to hear the steady drip of water and felt a slight change in the air currents.

  Our tunnel had led us to a wide cavern, just as promised on our map. The cavern on the map bore none of the warnings or notations as some other areas, but as I stepped into the space, I felt a twist of wariness in my gut.

  Lavinia was close behind me with the torch, but the cavern was too deep for the light to reach down to the end. Though I caught the glimmer of water as it dripped from the stalactites on either side, even the walls that surrounded us were lost in shadow.

  Merlin seemed agitated as well, and he growled and lashed his tail as he ran back and forth in front of us. He wasn’t looking at any of us, however, but up into the darkness above.

  I followed the puca’s gaze, but I couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness. Silently, I motioned to Lavinia to hand me the torch, and when she did, I held it up as high as I could in an attempt to see what was bothering Merlin so much. As soon as I had, I almost wished I hadn’t.

  The ceiling of the cavern wasn’t as high up as I’d initially thought, but it looked even lower thanks to the masses of hairy bodies that clung to it. It was hard to make out what the creatures were at first, but then I began to pick out the spindly legs as they twitched to life, and as I stared up, one of the bodies shifted and then suddenly a set of eight eyes stared back at me.

  Following the first, at least a dozen more hairy bodies shifted, and the ceiling above glittered with shining eyes. Finally, my brain supplied the appropriate word for what I was looking at:

  Spiders. Gargantuan spiders. The smallest had to be at least as big as I was, and some of the larger ones were closer to Maruk in size.

  “Oh, no,” the orc breathed.

  Mandibles at the creatures’ mouths wiggled in front of me, and behind me, I heard Lavinia draw an arrow from her quiver.

  “Maybe--” Aerin swallowed nervously. “Maybe they’re not aggressive.”

  Given where we were, I rather doubted that, but none of the spiders had moved yet except to look at us, and a small part of me hoped that they might let us pass. Either way, I didn’t want to make another move without some sort of plan, so I reached back to put a hand on Lavinia’s bow.

  “Hang on,” I whispered. “Let’s think about this.”

  Attacking one of the spiders might spur the others to retaliate, and I didn’t want them all flooding into the tunnel after us. Perhaps they were simply curious and would leave us be as long as we didn’t provoke them, but we needed to be prepared to defend ourselves if that wasn’t the case.

  “We should move forward as a group, and stay close together,” I said. “The spiders outnumber us three to one, and we won’t last long if we each tried to fend them off individually. We’ll go quickly and quietly and hope they leave us alone, but if not, we need to get into a corner so they can’t surround us.”

  “Which corner?” Aerin asked.

  The torchlight didn’t reach far enough into the cavern for me to get a good lay of the land, so as hesitant as I was to look away from the dozens of shining, watching eyes above us, I unfurled the map again. The cavern was longer than it was wide and shaped more or less like a canoe that tapered off at each end where the tunnels connected. There were no other outlets than our tunnel and the one we needed to get through, which I judged to be about fifty yards ahead going by the scale on the map. Based on the drawing, the sides of the cavern offered little in the way of hiding places or defensible positions, but there was a small crevice against the lefthand wall, about two-thirds of the way across the spiders’ lair. That would be the best place to make our stand if necessary.

  “See this crevice?” I said as I pointed it out to the others. “That’s where we’ll need to go. Then, if we can get an opening, we’ll continue into the tunnel ahead. Hopefully, it’ll be small enough to bottleneck the rest of the spiders, at least. Follow my lead and don’t make any sudden movements.”

  Aerin scooped up Merlin and cradled him against her chest while Maruk adjusted the straps of his shields over his arms. Lavinia fitted a set of four arrows onto her bowstring and gave me a short nod.

  With everyone ready, I stepped out of the mouth of our tunnel into the cavern, and we moved in a diamond formation, Aerin and Lavinia on either side of me and Maruk just behind. I held the torch low so as not to agitate the spiders, but my gaze was drawn up at the ceiling and the masses of hairy bodies more than I watched the way ahead.

  Merlin chattered nervously, and Aerin hushed him and bundled him tighter in her cloak while all those beady eyes above us tracked our every move. My heart pounded against my ribs, but I made my breathing even and
took slow, measured steps across the stone floor of the cavern. I figured we were about halfway across when I heard a soft crunch, and Lavinia sucked in a sharp breath.

  “I stepped in something,” she whispered. “Like a cocoon.”

  I moved the torch to see what it was, and my stomach twisted. Fine white powder drifted up from the husk of dried webbing at Lavinia’s feet. It was empty, and her boot had broken through part of it, but the general shape of what it had once contained was still recognizable. It looked distinctly humanoid, like the burial wrappings around a mummy, and I knew instantly what it meant.

  These spiders were eating more than cave insects down here.

  As if on cue, one of the spiders detached itself from the ceiling and dropped down to the cavern floor on a silky line of webbing as thick around as my arm. Its mandibles twitched as it raised its forelegs to paw at the air. I didn’t know if that was meant to communicate anything, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out, so I began to back toward the wall and the crevice where we would make our stand, my eyes glued on the spider.

  Aerin let out a shaky breath as she clutched Merlin tight and edged back as well, and Maruk moved slightly to place himself between the spider and the rest of us.

  “Keep moving,” I whispered.

  My knuckles were tight around the end of the torch as I held it up and cast a quick glance over my shoulder to confirm that the crevice was behind us. It was, but it was narrower than I’d anticipated and wouldn’t provide as much shelter as I had initially hoped. Just as I began to wonder if we should try to make a run for the tunnel, two more spiders dropped down to cut off our way forward, and I set my jaw.

  A fight it would be, then.

  “Aerin, set Merlin down,” I said. The puca had proven he was resourceful in a fight. I wondered what the extent of his shapeshifting abilities was, and if he could become something larger to rival these spiders.

  She did, and the puca stayed close to our group as we backed up against the wall, but he watched the spiders intently and flicked his tail.

  Several more dropped down before us, but those that remained on the ceiling weren’t idle. They stretched their legs and scuttled to and fro in the wavering light of my torch as they watched us from above.

  “I’d like to start shooting about now,” Lavinia informed me. “Any objections?”

  We had the cavern wall at our backs now and the meager shelter of the crevice on either side, so we were about as prepared as we could be.

  “Go for it,” I said.

  I heard Lavinia draw a steadying breath as she pulled back her bowstring and let the first volley of arrows fly. To my surprise, she had aimed for a group on the ceiling, and as her arrows met their marks, three giant spiders let out equally terrible shrieks and fell from their perches to land with heavy thumps on the cave floor, their legs curled up to their bulbous, hairy abdomens. Lavinia’s arrow hadn’t been enough to kill the fourth spider, however, and it jolted forward and began to charge across the cavern ceiling toward us with the arrow still protruding from its back.

  Another arrow from Lavinia brought it down, and it fell as the others had with a piercing shriek, but that still left us with eight spiders to deal with, and the rest were dropping from the ceiling to join the ones that were on the floor and began to surround us.

  All of a sudden, Merlin dashed out and ran beneath the lead spider’s legs, and it turned to pursue him into the dark. There was nothing I could do but hope that the puca would be okay as that act set the rest of the spiders off. They all charged us at once with hisses and screeches.

  I raised my hand, and pain flared up at the base of my skull as I attempted to cast the same illusory fog that I had used against the dwarves. I forced myself to focus as the prickling sensation of the mana rushed out from my core, down my arm, and out through my open palm.

  The spider nearest to me stopped, and its pincers twitched as it took a few steps back in confusion. I stared into its eight beady eyes as I held the illusion for as long as I could.

  On my right, Maruk strained against the weight of another screeching spider as it leapt against his shield. The spark of Maruk’s mana flared up as he bashed his shield forward into the spider’s belly, and when the creature sprawled back, Lavinia wasted no time in sending an arrow into its head. It shuddered, slumped down, and then its hairy legs curled up beneath it.

  Two more spiders converged on Maruk, and he shoved them back with his twin shields while Lavinia filled them with arrows.

  In the same moment, Aerin held up her hand to unleash a flood of blinding light in the face of the spider that rose up to attack her, and the monster reeled back with a screech. That gave the elf the opening she needed to slam her mace down against its face, and dark blood spurted from the wound as the spider crumpled into a heap.

  My skull pounded with the effort it took to maintain the illusion over my own spider. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer, but thanks to Aerin, I had another idea. I let my hand fall, and the spider seemed to shake itself as the illusion dissipated. It recovered quickly and let out a furious hiss as it charged at me again, but this time, I let it get close before I swung the torch out in an arc and drove it into the spider’s many eyes.

  The creature squealed and skittered back as its face smoked, and a second later, Lavinia put it out of its misery with an arrow shot directly between its twitching mandibles.

  It wasn’t until then that I became aware of something incredibly strange, or at least, stranger in context than enormous man-eating spiders. From somewhere in the cavern, I could hear a dog snarling and barking, and a moment later, the largest of the spiders scurried out of the darkness, pursued by an equally large hound with wiry black fur. It had to be Merlin, and if we weren’t fighting for our lives, it might have been comical to see a giant dog chasing a giant spider, but I was just relieved that the puca was holding his own as I turned back to the last two spiders that stood between us and the way forward.

  Maruk stepped forward and shouted to draw their attention, but instead of charging forward as the others had, these two reared back onto their hind legs, and I realized what they were about to do a heartbeat before it happened.

  I started to shout a warning to Maruk, but I didn’t get the words out before the spiders’ venom shot forth in two high arcs at the orc. One of the streams hit his shield, and the metal sizzled while the sharp smell of corrosive acid filled the air. The other spider’s venom arched over the smaller of Maruk’s shields and hit him on the chest, and he cried out as he buckled to his knees. The metal and leather of his armor smoked where the venom had made contact, and I knew without having to see it that it had burned through to his skin.

  Aerin raced to Maruk’s side while Lavinia brought down one of the spiders with a quick shot, but the other spider had already begun to rear back for another attack.

  I threw up my hand, and the surge of mana shot through my body like an electric current. As I directed my power at the final spider, I closed my hand into a fist, and released my power. The spider stopped suddenly, half its body raised off the ground. Its fangs gleamed in the torchlight in a frozen moment before it let out a rattling sound as the light of its mana faltered and was extinguished entirely. It fell onto its back, and its legs curled in.

  Maruk was still crouched on the ground, and Aerin murmured softly to him as she healed the damage the spider’s venom had done.

  I turned to Lavinia then to check that she was alright and was somewhat surprised to see her grinning. It must have shown on my face because the archer gestured out into the cavern with a toss of her head.

  “Your puca brought you a gift,” she said.

  I followed her gaze and saw Merlin, still in the shape of a giant dog, lope out of the shadows with the hairy leg of a spider dangling out of his mouth.

  Maruk laughed, though it was a strained sort of sound, as Merlin dropped the severed spider leg before us and wagged his tail. The leg was mangled and riddled wit
h bite marks and smears of dark blood, and I was suddenly glad that I didn’t have to see what Merlin had done to the rest of the spider.

  “Ugh,” Maruk groaned. “That is disgusting.”

  Merlin gave a happy bark and snapped up the spider leg again. He crunched it between his jaws a few times before he tossed it into the air, caught it, and swallowed it.

  “Gross,” Lavinia said as she stepped forward to retrieve her arrows from the spiders’ bodies.

  “Indeed,” Maruk agreed. “Thank you, Aerin.”

  The elf nodded as she stepped back. “It’s probably going to feel stiff for a while,” she warned, “but you’re not going to die on us anytime soon.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” the orc responded with a pained grunt as he got to his feet again.

  “Are you alright, Gabriel?” Aerin asked. Without waiting for my answer, however, she came over to inspect me herself and frowned. “You burned your hand.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I responded. A few stray embers had flown onto my hand when I’d used the torch to attack the spider, but I hadn’t even noticed the pain until Aerin pointed it out.

  She pressed her lips into a smile. “The good thing about having a healer in your guild is that you can get patched up whenever you need to.” She closed both of her hands around mine, and her hazel eyes stared into my own. Soft light glowed up between our hands, and I heard the gentle chime of bells as Aerin’s magic healed the burns. She gave my hand a comforting pat when she stepped back again. It was difficult to tell in the torchlight, but I thought she might have been blushing.

  “Ugh,” Lavinia groaned as she flicked gooey spider guts from the tips of her arrows. “I hate animals!”

  Merlin growled in response, but Lavinia wasn’t intimidated and faced his long fangs with a glare.

  “You bet that includes you, fuzzy,” she snapped and wagged an arrow in his face.

  Merlin’s growl became a displeased whine, and he slunk back toward me and Aerin as he shifted into his ordinary form.